Scientifically Interesting
by ScorplinginTraining
Summary: A little sweet, fluffy Waige fun.


SCIENTIFICALLY INTERESTING

 **AN: One shot of just a little pure Waige fluff before the premier. I wanna see this kinda stuff happen SO bad! I was going to publish this in my "All The Waige" collection, but it went a little long to consider it a drabble.**

He's learned a good many things about her after nearly five years of friendship and just shy of two years of that time as a couple. He's certainly studied her more than any other subject in his entire life. He considers it a privilege to have intimate knowledge about her.

For example, Walter is well aware Paige hogs the covers and she sometimes borrows his clothes and later claims the articles as her own. He's cognizant of the fact she's allergic to strawberries. He also knows she loves them, so occasionally she illogically eats them anyway and puts up with the consequences. He knows she listens to her music on full volume when she's cleaning house because she says the only way she can tolerate mopping and scrubbing toilets is when she's singing at the top of her lungs. He knows she often sings while showering as well. Her bathroom has incredible acoustics. By now, he's well acquainted with and has extensively explored every one of her ticklish spots. He knows her favorite colors both to wear and for room décor. He knows her favorite book, her favorite movie, her favorite flower and her favorite animal. He knows the name of her childhood friends and pets and what she told her parents she wanted to be when she grew up. In addition, he's figured out almost everything that annoys her, what makes her feel self-conscious and what situations make her anxious.

But after all this time, no matter how much he's learned about her, Walter often marvels at how frequently Paige can still surprise him. Especially in the areas of attraction and arousal.

The latest example of the phenomenon occurred on her most recent birthday…

In his life prior to meeting Paige, Walter never saw the importance of celebrating birthdays. After all, the person being born didn't accomplish anything every other person on the planet didn't achieve. It would be more logical for someone to give his or her mother a gift annually on the anniversary of one's birth. The mother did all the work. All the child did was show up. There was no choice in the matter.

But as soon as Paige learned the date of Walter's birth, she would insist on buying him cards and gifts and wishing him many happy returns of the day.

And she would always bake a cake. Delicious, yes, but empty calories ultimately causing a carbohydrate rush and inevitable crash.

In spite of its lack of nutritional value, he began to really look forward to that cake each year. He'd never before seen the purpose of baking when most baked goods were conveniently available in pre-made form. Until he tried Paige's cakes. There was no comparison in quality. And it paired so well with his coffee.

Their established custom was for Walter to take Paige out to eat, but this particular time, when Paige's birthday was looming on the calendar, Walter thought maybe she would appreciate someone baking a cake for her for a change.

He'd been cooking simple meals for himself since he was seventeen years old. He decided baking wasn't that different. It was basically just elementary math and chemistry. How hard could it be?

After a quick search, he found a recipe for what was surely the perfect cake for her. How could he go wrong with a chocolate layer cake and salted caramel frosting? The pictures made the cake look appetizing and Walter knew Paige would enjoy the salty-sweet flavor combination.

Inordinately pleased with his superior plan, Walter went shopping for the ingredients at the local market. He quickly found himself wishing he'd perfected his app for mapping a grocery store because he was unable to track down a few of the items. Even with the human progress he'd made, he still found it tedious to engage in small talk or consult with strangers, particularly when he was in the middle of a project. He didn't want to take the time to find the right person to ask, so he ended up purchasing a few chemically similar components he felt could be used as substitutes without altering the recipe too much.

The first effort was a complete disaster.

Walter didn't own a flour sifter, so the batter was a gluey, lumpy mess no matter how long he continued to stir it... as he didn't have a mixer either.

He also discovered he didn't have the proper cake pans. He thought it would be okay to wash and repurpose the dusty, bent pie pans he unearthed from the back of a cabinet in the loft. He remembered he'd used them once in an evaporation rate experiment. They were three different sizes, but he thought he could compensate by making sure the depth in each pan was roughly equivalent. He timed it just like the recipe said, but the layer in the wider pan was burned to charcoal.

And it initially seemed redundant to grease _and_ flour the pans… until he discovered all three layers were stuck fast. He tried chiseling them out, but ended up tossing the whole sorry mess in the trash can, pans and all.

It wasn't his fault. He simply didn't have the proper equipment.

His original plan included cooking dinner for Paige as well, however he calculated he wouldn't have enough time to go to the kitchen store, bake the cake and prepare the main dish. So Walter made a hasty decision to have the salad and main courses delivered from a local restaurant and he left the garage to go shopping once again.

One hour and twenty-nine minutes and two hundred eleven dollars and seventy-eight cents later, he made it back to the garage. Really pressed for time, he began the rather tiresome process all over again following the instructions to the letter this time with only a few chemically similar items occasionally thrown in.

When sifting the dry ingredients together, his elbow hit the canister of baking powder. It teetered on the counter's edge and tipped upside down as it fell, spilling the entire contents all over the work surface and the floor and ending with a spectacular cloud of fine white particles as the container bounced a few times before coming to rest.

Walter coughed and blinked rapidly, fanning the area around him, as the white fog dissipated.

Well, crap. A new dilemma. No more baking powder and no more time for another trip to the store.

He refused to let a stupid cake defeat him. He would prevail.

Thoughts scrambling for a solution, he searched both kitchens in the garage looking for a viable substitute.

Ah, Ha!

Walter spied a box of baking soda in the back of the refrigerator down stairs. They were essentially the same thing. Both contained bicarbonate of soda. They were both chemical leavening agents that release carbon dioxide bubbles into the batter. The only minor difference was the powder contained a touch of cream of tartar and didn't require acid to activate. He would add a dash of milk to the batter. Problem solved.

Except there was no milk to be found.

But he did see Toby's hideous hazelnut creamer in the same refrigerator as the baking soda. Hmmm. It served a milk-like function. Hopefully it was acidic enough to activate the baking soda. And it was only slightly out of date. He did the sniff test and deemed the creamer safe for use. It was simply a suggested 'sell by' date at any rate.

Moving the entire operation downstairs to escape the white mess coating every work surface, Walter sifted, greased, floured, mixed both on low and high speeds, poured, scraped and finally slipped the pans into the oven with barely a minute of his allotted cook time to spare.

Breaking into Fort Knox had been less complicated.

While the layers were baking, the genius considered the venue. Storms were predicted for the area that evening, so the roof was out. The loft was eliminated as a possibility due to the coating of powder dusting everything. The conference table would have to do. It wasn't a very romantic setting, but perhaps the delectable cake and the company would be sufficient in the ambiance department.

It took him a while to find them, but he finally dug out the tablecloth and candles from the stash Paige kept with the other seasonal decorations. Stepping back from the table once the items were in place, it occurred to him he probably should have picked up flowers for a centerpiece.

Oh, well. Next time.

The timer on his phone beeped and Walter went to check on the cake's progress. All three layers still looked wet and dipped pretty dramatically in the middle.

He hadn't allowed for any extra time. It couldn't be helped, however. He would need to expedite the cooling process by placing the cake layers in the freezer.

Walter reset the timer for another ten minutes and began assembling the components for the ganache and frosting.

Even after an additional twenty-four minutes of baking time, all three layers were a little flat and a bit sunken in their centers. The recipe said to test for doneness with a toothpick. Toothpicks were one of the items he was unable to find at the store, so he quickly grabbed a handy screwdriver from Happy's work station.

It left a pretty substantial hole and another sunken area in the layer he tested. There was also a small amount of residual batter left on the tool. But he didn't dare leave the cake in the oven a second longer because the edges were rapidly turning too dark. He would just have to fill in the holes with icing.

There was no more time to let the cake cool properly either. Paige was due to arrive in another seventeen minutes.

She was early.

Paige breezed in the door saying, "What time is our reservation? I'm starving…"

She soon spied him at the kitchen table spreading thick salted caramel goop on the top of the squishy, pitted monstrosity of a birthday cake while trying to keep the layers from sliding off to one side of each other as the ganache in between them melted.

Walter had no clue the picture he presented with smears of all manner of substances streaking his shirt, chocolate dotting his nose and forehead and powered sugar handprints on his butt and the backs of his thighs from where he'd attempted to brush off his hands. And the piece de resistance was his dark hair, made wildly curly from the heat and humidity in the kitchen, liberally coated from the shower of baking powder turning it salt and pepper gray.

Lips twitching at the view, amusement plain in her twinkling eyes, Paige said, "Well, hi. What's all this?"

Knowing his effort was an inadequate imitation of her confections, he straightened up. Looking monumentally embarrassed, he answered, "Uh… happy birthday?" Their collective gaze dropped to watch as the cake slowly listed over and fell sideways.

During the next few quiet moments in which Paige was obviously trying to suppress laughter, he recalled he never called to have dinner delivered. Giving her a pained grimace he confessed his oversight and then blurted out the story of the whole ordeal and how disappointed he was his perfect plans came to naught. He capped it off with, "I'm so sorry, Paige. I guess I've ruined your birthday."

That's when the newest inexplicable incident happened.

The look in Paige's eyes softened. She just shook her head and replied, "You are ridiculously adorable. You know that?" Then she flung her arms around him and kissed him hard right on the lips.

Walter wasn't about to argue. He kissed her back as if his whole existence was depending on it. He felt her melt against him whimpering into his mouth.

Not long after he was pleasantly surprised to have a deliciously naked Paige laid out like a sumptuous feast before him on the conference table. She kept dabbing the shockingly tasty ganache and salted caramel frosting on more and more interesting areas of both of their bodies. They spent a considerable amount of time making sure those spots were licked completely and thoroughly clean.

His conclusion? He was wrong about Baked Alaska. Paige Dineen was definitely the most fascinating and surprising and beautiful and scientifically interesting dessert.


End file.
